Characterizing wildlife behavioural responses to roads using integrated step selection analysis

Roads are a prevalent, ever-increasing form of human disturbance on the landscape. In many places in western North America, energy development has brought human and road disturbance into seasonal winter range areas for migratory elk.

We sought to evaluate the predictions from the risk-disturbance hypothesis when studying elk response to roads during winter. Road proximity and crossing were used to evaluate these behaviours, which offered a rare comparison between two common measures of roads. We used integrated step selection analysis (iSSA) to evaluate four alternative hypotheses regarding the influence of roads on space-use behaviour across 175 elk-years of elk telemetry data, and we quantified both population-level and individual-level variations in responses.

We demonstrated, for the first time, how iSSA can be used to combine movement analysis in a refined approach to habitat selection. Elk responded to roads as they would natural predation risk. Elk selected areas farther fr...

道路是景观生态系统中分布广泛且持续加剧的人类干扰类型之一。在北美西部诸多区域，能源开发活动使得人类活动与道路干扰侵入了迁徙麋鹿的季节性冬季栖息地。
本研究旨在验证冬季环境下麋鹿对道路的响应相关的风险干扰假说（risk-disturbance hypothesis）预测结果。我们采用道路邻近度与道路穿越两个指标来评估麋鹿的相关行为，这一设计为两种常见的道路干扰量化方式提供了罕见的对比场景。本研究依托175个麋鹿年的麋鹿遥测数据集，采用集成步长选择分析（integrated step selection analysis, iSSA）对4种关于道路对麋鹿空间利用行为影响的备选假说进行验证，并量化了种群级与个体级的响应差异。
本研究首次证实，集成步长选择分析可通过精细化的生境选择分析框架整合运动分析。麋鹿对道路的响应模式与其应对自然捕食风险的模式一致，麋鹿会选择距离道路更远的区域……